rsync - Mar 2009 - Problems while transferring big files

Hello there,

is it a known issue/problem with rsync transferring big files (let's say
over 0,5 GB)? I'm using "rsync -rtz" to transfer over an SSH
tunnel and
I always get

12 Error in rsync protocol data stream

Any suggestions on how to solve this? Maybe removing "z" compression
could be helping? At this regard: how does compression work? When is it
done? I mean, are the files *first* compressed on the client and then
transferred, od is the compression being done *while* transferring, in
some sort of buffer?

Thanks,

Flavio Boniforti

PIRAMIDE INFORMATICA SAGL
Via Ballerini 21
6600 Locarno
Switzerland
Phone: +41 91 751 68 81
Fax: +41 91 751 69 14
Url: http://www.piramide.ch
E-mail: flavio@piramide.ch

On Fri, Mar 06, 2009 at 08:20:43AM +0100, Boniforti Flavio
wrote:
> I'm using "rsync -rtz" to transfer over an SSH tunnel and
> I always get
> 
> 12 Error in rsync protocol data stream
That is just the error code and its interpretation.  What error message
comes prior to that?

We hypothesize that there can be an accidental match in the checksum
data, which would cause the two sides to put different streams of data
into their gzip compression algorithm, and eventually get out of sync
and blow up.  If you have a repeatable case of a new file overwriting an
existing file that always fails, and if you can share the files, make
them available somehow (e.g. put them on a web server) and send the list
(or me) an email on how to grab them, and we can run some tests.

If the above is the cause of the error, running without -z should indeed
avoid the issue.

..wayne..